It's quite obvious that English has much to do with German. Resemblances can be seen both in grammar and vocabulary.
Such as, help=helfen, give=geben, and=und, water=Wasser,mother=Mutter, father=Vater...
It is impossible that...= Es ist unmöglich, dass...

Just a question (I am not a linguist but it is so striking) about parts of Spain and parts of Southern France: I think these linguists didn't take all continental Celtic languages into account - different forms of Celtic and other Idoeuropean languages like Lusitan were spoken in Iberia and Southern France before the arrival of the Romans, so the green colour present in parts of the British Islands should also be present in parts of Spain, Portugal and Southern France...

I think kinship by way of melody (accent) is underrated. Kindred melodies of different languages/dialects may not be useful to trace the family tree as defined my grammar and root of words (traditional linguistics), but might tell a more accurate tale about the genetic kinship between peoples. This could be verified (or negated) by research using modern means of DNA analysis. Maybe this is already being done, if so, it would be interesting to read about.

An exceedingly powerful visual tool that compresses staggering amounts of information into a single image. Bravo!
If around 5000 BC the north pole was somewhat to the east, the migration pattern would follow lines of constant latitude, thus economizing both animal habitat and crop climate.

This seems way too strong a conclusion "leave much less room for doubt". The study by authors is definitely an interesting model. However, this model also has limitations, two are mentioned below.
1. Information flow associated with languages is not necessarily unidirectional. As the authors state in original paper "This phylogeographic approach treats language location as a continuous vector (longitude and latitude) that evolves through time along the
branches of a tree ... ". But we do know that languages can adopt words from each other. Therefore the phylogenetic approach adopted from bioinformatics (where younger generations do not pass genetic information to parents) is less probably not accurate to model languages.
2. Another simplification (or lack of) in this study is the movement of underlying population (speakers). It is already acknowledged that topology around the middle east has changed significantly in the last 10,000 years due to drying up of several rivers. Archeological records have shown migratory patterns. To the best of my understanding these migrations have not been taken into account in this modeling study.
The other concern is that the conclusions of the paper are very strong but do not take into account several archeological records and also information from records regarding written scripts.

“Leave little room for doubt”? I don’t know. Author J.P. may be too hasty. Even though a process of calculations maintains consistency, reasoning from a set of oversimplified presumptions often leads to unreal conclusions.

Dr Atkinson (and Dr Gray) might as well more strictly separate linguistic inference and geographical inference. The 2003 study in question doesn’t even present sufficient reasoning whether some Proto-Indo-European language groups moved from Anatolia to the north (e.g. the Anatolian Hypothesis) or the Proto-Hittite Proto-Indo-European language groups moved from north into Anatolia (e.g. the Kurgan Hypothesis). Conventional academics generally support that the groups of people that used to speak languages or a language that later developed into Hittite moved from north into Anatolia, and we must notice that even this scenario doesn’t conflict with Dr Atkinson’s study which is fundamentally a case of linguistic inference and not necessarily a case of appropriate geographical inference. It is about general methodology, and even laymen can point it out if they read the paper in question.

It is because Dr Atkinson may possibly have oversimplified presumptions for his calculations, just as a lot of macroeconomic theorists hold dubious postulates based on the presumptions that factors of production are or can be made malleable to a sufficient extent and thus real investment is or can be made reversible to a sufficient extent. Both Dr Atkinson and those macroeconomic theorists apply the method for thermodynamics to their studies, and even some of the latter use the Monte Carlo filter, which Dr Atkinson used in his calculations along the Anatolian Hypothesis that conflicts with the Kurgan Hypothesis. In the real world, however, are black swans that alter the actual course of development from the supposed course of development, and often utterly (e.g. Mortgage-Backed Securities or MBS). What if the Hittites and their ancestors, in contrast to peoples in the northern steppes, only maintained old forms and words form some political and technological reasons?

I would suggest that Author J.P. should have a read of John Maynard Keynes’ ‘The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money’ (1936). I suspect that Dr Atkinson’s method is relevant to what Keynes used to call ‘the pitfall of pseudo-mathematical method’ (p. 275) and ‘a great fault of symbolic pseudo-mathematical methods of formalising a system of economic analysis’ (p. 297). Keynes, as excellent mathematician as well as great economist, says of mainstream economists, “Too large a proportion of recent ‘mathematical’ economists are merely concoction, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.” (p. 298) Keynes’ warning may be applicable to the field of linguistic archaeology, too.

"Leave much less room for doubt" - a computer model?
About 20,000 years ago,hunter gathers from Asia and Indian subcontinent moved to SAPTA SINDHU - land of seven rivers in modern day India - Pakistan - Afghanistan.Reason? Those seven rivers led by mighty Saraswati [ dried up since 1900BC] became perennial with the conclusion of last ice age and melting of Himalayan snow.Land mass measuring more than 200,000 sq.kms turned in to veritable [ and original]garden of Eden for hunter -gatherers to migrate to from all directions.This is where they [a]Domesticated cow [b] invented agriculture [c] invented cotton farming & textiles [d]evolved settled life of farming and cow breeding [e] evolved language that eventully became rigvedic Sanskrit [f] composed Vedas in Rigvedic Sanskrit and finally dispersed to various lands with their language and culture, when Saraswati dried up[ 1900BC]
Dr Atkinson is welcome to study Hindu mytholgy related to SURASUR SANGRAM & AMRIT MANTHAN.Iranians and tribes beyond Iran are descendents of these ASURAS [ includig modern Syrians] who were defeated in the battles between SURAS & ASURAS.That was the first outward migration of civilized people from this cradle of civilization.Rest as they say is history.

During the time of the Han Dynasty 2000 years ago, the linguistics of Eurasia were predominatly Aryanic Indo-Europeans. By the time of Tang Dynasty 1000 year later, the linguistics are forever changed to Western Atlaic (Turkic)

How did the Steppes theorists separate the effects of repeated incursions from the Central Asian Steppes into the realms of Indo-European language speakers (ex. The Magyars, the Turks, the Finns etc.)?

This process is analogous to how Merret Ruhlen theorized the phylogeny of African, and North and South American languages 25 years ago. His conclusions were mirrored to a startling degree by genetic data involving the hemoglobin molecule. In the absence of a better methodology, cognate analysis may be the best tool to investigate the history of human language.

This process is analogous to how Merret Ruhlen theorized the phylogeny of African, and North and South American languages 25 years ago. His conclusions were mirrored to a startling degree by genetic data involving the hemoglobin molecule. In the absence of a better methodology, cognate analysis may be the best tool to investigate the history of human language.

While Arabic did have a strong influence on parts of Spanish vocabulary, the core of Spanish is Latinate; that is, grammar and core vocabulary. The living siblings of Arabic are other Semitic tongues like Amharic, Aramaic, and Hebrew. And there are plenty of dead ones too, like Phoenician, Canaanite, Akkadian, and Babylonian.

I'm surprised that the IE steppe hypothesis is still considered viable. Looking at core vocabulary makes it clear that the steppe must have been a later development of one branch of IE, not the whole family. And the genetic evidence favors the Anatolian hypothesis quite strongly.

Yes, but the archeological evidence strongly favors a steppe origin. For example, a the deduced proto-Indo-European vocabulary indicates familiarity with pastoralism in general and especially with horses. The archeology is clear that horses were essentially absent from Anatolia and were introduced from the steppe. That finding is not completely inconsistent with an early Anatolian origin for PIE, but it leads more naturally to a later steppe origin for the language group. Statistical studies like this one are very useful, and may well be correct. However, they are sensitive to model assumptions and biases in the underlying of data. Example: population density and early literacy in Anatolia might bias the result in favor of an Anatolian origin. This study attracted attention in part because the result is quite robust to changes in the model assumptions. That's good news, but it is by no means the last word, so to speak.

I've mentioned previously my surprise in finding similar words within English, Dari, Urdu, Arabic, and Spanish, along with the more well-known connections found between some of those languages and Dutch, German, Italian, etc.

So, in looking at the link, I was a bit surprised not to see stronger connections between Arabic and Spanish, Arabic and Dari, and Dari and Urdu (the latter of which has been described as a roughly 40:60 mix of Dari and local Hindi languages).

However, the link itself says that it feels that it missed some rather obvious connections due to a lack of data, if I understand correctly:

"The rapid expansion of a single language and nodes associated with branches not represented in our sample will not be reflected in this figure.

"For example, the lack of Continental Celtic variants in our sample means we miss the Celtic incursion into Iberia and instead infer a later arrival into the Iberian peninsular associated with the break-up of the Romance languages (and not the initial rapid expansion of Latin)."

That is because the Arabic influence came from the Moors in Spain, Latin is the base for the language in Spain. There are a lot of borrowed words but that came more or less before and during the Renaissance, if my history is correct.

That is because the Arabic influence came from the Moors in Spain, Latin is the base for the language in Spain. There are a lot of borrowed words but that came more or less before and during the Renaissance, if my history is correct.

And, before the Moors, arrived the Goths and Swabians, so there also many words like "guerra" (which sounds like war and means war) which were brought by then. Anyway, the number of Arab words in Spanish is smaller than the number of French words in English as a consequence of the Norman conquer.

My take on this is that perhaps it's not so profound. Of interest, for sure, but the importance?
It seems to me that the important marker here (and one the The Economist would no doubt be interested in) is the connection to commerce. Without commerce, defined in a broad sense, there would have been little need to exchange information; there would be no development of centers of commerce where people, money, and intellect come together.
So we think we are tracking language here, but we're really tracking other things, in addition or by proxy.

Middle class populations in every country place similar focus on English: in China, in India, in Thailand, in Malaysia, in Brazil and increaingly in Arab countries.

Most mainstream languages now loan thousands of words annually from English - dissipated through popular culture and corruptions of business jargon as much as through science or technology.

Is it possible for major national languages to be replaced wholesale, or is the tendancy rather towards mere mutual intelligibility (with small grammar shifts, vocabulary convergence and bilingualism)?

* English is official language in Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and Paupa New Guinea, is the second language in Malaysia (with all math & science teaching in state schools taught in English) - all surrounding Indonesia. And in Indonesia we are hearing stories like this:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26indo.html?pagewanted=all

In India, English is increasingly the language of the elite, as it dominates in firms and for inter-state commerce (especially for North-South trade within India). As a marker of social standing and aspiration (which is really an extension of commerce), English is also coming to dominate second language learning among non-Hindi Indian minorities (which together constitute a majority).

In Europe, there are very high levels of English fluency and English use in academia and business, but also very strong governments and state education which focus on maintaining high standards in the national language.

Will the future look like Star Trek, where explorers travelling the earth can enjoy countless cultures, but every group speaks something pretty close to a single world language?

It happened in the US where German, French and Spanish had been majority languages in certain states and among immigrant populations - will it happen to densely populated countries with presently established languages?

"Middle class populations in every country place similar focus on English:"
True, but the success of such efforts varies greatly from country to country, due to linguistic distance from their native tongue to English. Thus the Japanese see very low ROI on their effort to learn English...